Thursday, January 25, 2018

Stalin had ‘a Cult of Personality,’ Brezhnev One ‘Without Personality,’ and Now Putin has ‘a Cult of the Cult of Personality,’ Gutmakher Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, January 25 – Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin for building up “a cult of personality,” and
Soviet dissidents described the situation under Leonid Brezhnev as “a cult
without a personality.” But now Tata Gutmakher says, Vladimir Putin, in an act
of cowardice before the late dictator, has formed “a cult of the cult of
personality.”

And
what that means, Gutmakher continues, is that “in present-day Russia the ruler
isn’t event a tyrant but rather cowardice in the face of this tyrant.” Those
who fear Stalin now insist that “in Russia, the death of Stalin must never be,
even in a movie” and declare that they will “resist [this] historical truth”
and treat that monster as a kind of saint.

But this ban on satire has an unexpected
outcome, she continues. It means that the regime is afraid of such a portrayal
of the past – and that in turn shows that the satire in this case is “working”
as intended. And the ban also calls attention to the fact that the authorities
are using expressions lifted directly from Stalinist times.

But in an
Internet age where banning a film from theaters will do little to prevent
people from watching it online, the Kremlin leader has guaranteed that this
film will be watched by an enormous share of the Russian population who are
more likely to laugh than get angry.The
only question now is who will have the last laugh.